The Big Sports Turn-Off continued over the weekend. A hockey player declared racism is everywhere and systemic. Overly woke pro basketball and baseball players had already turned off many fans with massive protests in their recent returns. On Sunday, Pac-12 athletes did their best to drive fans away from major college sports, too, by releasing social justice demands via The Players Tribune sports blog.
To see audacity on steroids, just read the Pac-12 athletes' demands in the story #WeAreUnited.
The Left Coast athletes' version of LBJ's Great Society wants to exert full control over 50 percent of school athletic revenues. They want to enact a social welfare program for low-income African American students, reduce the salaries of the league's commissioner, athletic directors and coaches, form a Black Athlete Summit and more.
Here are some of those demands in their words.
Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott, administrators and coaches must "voluntarily and drastically reduce excessive pay."
Performance and academic bonuses for coaches "must end."
The league's 12 universities must "End lavish facility expenditures and use some endowment funds to preserve all sports. As an example, Stanford University should reinstate all sports discontinued by tapping into their $27.7 billion endowment."
Pac-12 athletes are also demanding an end to racial injustice in college sports and society, strictly on their terms:
"Form a permanent civic-engagement task force made up of our leaders, experts of our choice, and university and conference administrators to address outstanding issues such as racial injustice in college sports and in society.
"In partnership with the Pac-12, 2% of conference revenue would be directed by players to support financial aid for low-income Black students, community initiatives, and development programs for college athletes on each campus."Form annual Pac-12 Black College Athlete Summit with guaranteed representation of at least three athletes of our choice from every school."
Of course, these defiant athletes are also demanding the right to profit handsomely from their names, images and likenesses.
Additionally, they are demanding -- if you can believe this -- control over each sport’s total conference revenue so they can distribute it evenly among athletes in their respective sports. Should the universities' boards of regents really trust kids as young as 18 and 19 to handle all that money?
The NCAA currently allows students five years to use up four years of athletic eligibility. That's no longer sufficient. The athletes want six years in order to "foster undergraduate and graduate degree completion." All told, they would get six years of free tuition, as professional athletes.
Furthermore, the athletes are demanding: "Elimination of all policies and practices restricting or deterring our freedom of speech, our ability to fully participate in charitable work, and our freedom to participate in campus activities outside of mandatory athletics participation."
Freedom of speech at Left Coast universities? Look up "Ben Shapiro."
It's hard enough to stomach the ongoing protests of professional athletes like LeBron James and others, and now university alumni and other sports fans may be facing equally petulant college brats ruining sports and school spirit.
What was it that Houston Texans' owner Bob McNair said about inmates running the prison? The same can now be said of rebellious college athletes attempting to dictate how their sports programs must be run as they infect their games with social justice nonsense. Taking no prisoners, the #WeAreUnited Pac-12 malcontents are practically demanding the keys to their schools' sports operations, risking this potential message from their fans: #WeAreGone.
